American King (New Camelot #3)

by Sierra Simone

  “Maxen, everything I’ve built has been to protect Lyr. After I learned the truth about us, that protection became more crucial than ever. Even my ex-husband Lorne didn’t know about him.”

  I move away from the window and into my bedroom, taking a moment to straighten my well-thumbed Bible on the end table before I wander into the dressing room. There’s a small picture on the vanity of me as child with Althea and Kay. I have no pictures of Imogen Leffey. God knows I wouldn’t have to search the White House too hard to find a portrait of Penley Luther, although I’d rather not.

  “My real parents were kept a secret from me too,” I say finally. “It didn’t make it any easier to learn it at thirty-six than it would have been to learn it at fourteen.”

  “I don’t want him to carry that burden at all,” she says. “Can’t you see that? It’s better that he never know.”

  Then I’ll never know him, a selfish part of me cried. God, how much I’ve wanted a child to hold and raise and love, and now I find I already have a son of my own, unfolding into manhood, and the idea of not knowing him ever slices at me.

  But it’s not only about my selfish need to know him, I recognize that. It’s about what’s best for him, and while I disagree with Morgan that it’s better for him to believe the lies he’s been told since birth, I don’t disagree with her so strongly that I can’t understand her concern.

  “I see that too,” I say. “But please see it the way I do. I’ve already committed enough sins…I don’t want to compound them by lying. I don’t want to miss any more of my son’s life.”

  A pause.

  I’m sitting down at the vanity now, toying with Greer’s necklaces, running my fingertips over slender chains and delicate pendants.

  “I’ll think about it,” Morgan says eventually. “It’s not a promise. But I’ll…I’ll think about it.”

  I close my eyes, trying to make myself think like a president again. Like a solider. And not like a man who’s just been gutted by his best friend and lover. “We have to prepare ourselves too, Morgan. If Abilene goes public about Lyr, that necessarily means the world will know about us. About what happened between us.”

  “Right,” she says, her voice once again climbing into her crisp Senator’s tones. Scandal and spin. This she knows, this she is comfortable with. “I can have my Chief of Staff liaison with Kay and Trieste, talk through a coordinated approach to media defense.”

  “Kay won’t be my Chief of Staff much longer,” I say, glancing over at the picture of us as kids.

  “Why on Earth not?” Morgan sounds irritated. “She’s the best person you’ve got on your team.”

  “Which is why I’m appointing her Vice President,” I explain, a little impatiently. “Or did you forget that Embry is quitting the White House and planning to run against me?”

  “Oh,” she says. “That.”

  “You two will make a great team.”

  “As will you and Kay,” she concedes.

  “It makes a nice symmetry. A brother and sister on each side.”

  “And a brother and sister opposing each other,” she says and gives a small laugh, and for a moment, I remember Prague. I wonder what life would have been like if I’d met her as a sibling, if we could have loved each other as a brother and sister should do, instead of…well.

  Her laugh turns into another sigh. “It was Embry who told you about Lyr, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “He wanted so badly to protect you from the truth. To protect Lyr and me from exposure. He must have been very angry with you to change his mind.”

  Behind my eyelids I see his face in the office again, wildflower-blue eyes full of pain, lines of fury and resentment around his mouth and creasing his forehead.

  “I think he hates me.”

  “Maybe,” Morgan agrees. “But he’ll never stop loving you. You have that effect on people.”

  I open my eyes, looking at myself in the mirror. Silver speckling at my temples, a serious mouth, day-old stubble. A weary ex-soldier. A man who hurts the people he loves and gets hard doing it. I don’t deserve their love. I don’t deserve any of it. How funny that before tonight I never doubted anything about what I deserved, and now…

  “Do I have that effect on people?” I ask. “It feels more like I burn people out with my love, like I use them up until they’ve got nothing left. No one who loves me gets a happy ending, have you noticed? Just being close to me infects their lives with tragedy.”

  I don’t know why I’m confessing this all to Morgan. She’s one of the people I’ve harmed, a life I’ve ruined simply by existing inside of it. And other than this phone call, we haven’t spoken through anything other than memos and aides since I met Greer. We’re not in the habit of being vulnerable with each other.

  “I knew when I met you that it would end in tragedy. And I still wouldn’t have done a single thing differently. Not a single thing.”

  There’s an edge of defiance around the cold, steel core of her words, as if she’s daring me to argue. And I take the dare.

  “Why, Morgan? What has been the point of any of this? All this…suffering…and for what?”

  “What do you want me to say?” she asks. “That every part of your life has been hallmarked by coincidence, that all of this was just an accident?”

  Coincidence. Coincidence that the woman I got pregnant happened to be my sister. Coincidence that her stepbrother would be one of the two loves of my life. Coincidence that my father would have been a president too, that his vice president would be my wife’s grandfather.

  There can be a lot of coincidences in a man’s life, and yet this is too much.

  “No,” I reply. “I don’t want you to say that.”

  “Then you have to accept that things have happened the way they’ve happened and that you can’t change the past. There’s only the present.”

  “The present,” I murmur. The present when my little prince is running away from me, when my little prince is running against me. The present when I might lose everything. And I might deserve it.

  “Maxen, I…” she takes a deep breath. “For what it’s worth, I never doubted that you’d make a good father. You’re a good man. A great man. The best kind of man.”

  My fingers are tight around a necklace of Greer’s, my voice is also tight with pain as I answer. I still see Embry’s face. Hear his words.

  The difference is that I’m not afraid to do what needs to be done. And I think you are.

  “I don’t feel like a great man.”

  “If you did, it wouldn’t be true.”

  I don’t have an answer to that. It feels both wrong and right, that idea. That great men and women are necessarily filled with doubt and jagged humility.

  “You will know what to do,” she says. “About Lyr, about Embry, about Melwas. You will find a way through it.”

  “Do you really have such faith in me? You hate me.”

  “My faith goes beyond love and hate, Maxen. I may join Embry in running against you and I’ll fight my damnedest to win, but I’ll do it because it’s in my nature. Power and the winning of it. It’s not because I don’t believe you’re a good president or a good man. It’s not because I share the same delusion as Embry that you’re afraid of fighting.”

  I let go of Greer’s necklace and stand. “And what do you think I’m afraid of?”

  Morgan lets out a dark laugh. “Embry thinks you’ve grown passive, but I know the truth, little brother. You’ve grown so active that it feels like sharks are swimming in your mind. You itch for the fight so much it scares you awake in the middle of the night. You’re not afraid of conflict, you’re afraid of what will happen when you do fight. You’re afraid of yourself. And I think you’re going to unleash a kind of storm this country hasn’t seen in years when your control finally breaks.”

  “I won’t let it,” I vow. I couldn’t let it.

  “There’s more than one way for your armor to fracture.”

  I
narrow my eyes, even though I’m staring at a rack of ties and not my sister’s face. “What does that mean?”

  “It’s not a threat,” she says. “Just an observation.”

  And we’re silent for a moment more before I say, “I should go. About Lyr…”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “I recognize that’s all I can ask. I’m sorry, Morgan. For Prague, for Glein, for all of it.”

  “It’s too late to—”

  “Maybe it is too late. But I want you to know anyway. There’s not a night that goes by that Glein doesn’t haunt my dreams…that the whole fucking war doesn’t weigh on me. I failed you that day. I didn’t mean to, I was trying my hardest, but I still failed. I’m still responsible, and I’ll never forgive myself for it. Especially now, knowing about our son.”

  Morgan is quiet when she speaks. “Okay, Maxen.”

  “Okay?”

  “Okay,” she affirms.

  “Thank you.”

  “Good night, little brother.”

  “Good night, Morgan.”

  Three

  Ash

  now

  I didn’t sleep that night. I didn’t expect to, but it still feels bitter when it comes. The insomnia. The restless memories. The guilt. The endless chewing questions—what if what if what if.

  What if I’d saved everyone in Glein?

  What if I’d found ways to spare more enemies?

  What if I’d kept Greer safer before Melwas took her?

  And the wave of what ifs would curl and hang into the future—what if I begged Embry to come back? What if I went after Melwas right now? What if I said fuck everything and caught the next flight to Seattle to meet my son?

  Then the wave would collapse and crash, sucking itself back into the past. An endless, churning cycle of doubt. I only knew one way to stay the doubt, to part the guilt and the worry like a biblical sea, and that way was lost to me. My little prince had run away, my little princess was in another city. There was no one to wrestle, no one to whip, no one to kiss. No one to shove inside of and relieve every ache.

  Fuck. I needed it bad too. Those moments before Embry had told me he was leaving, his jacket crumpled in my fist, his fingers warm and probing the place I’d denied him so long…

  God, what I would have given. My kingdom. My soul, just to have Embry in front of me. I’d grab that jacket again, and then I’d push him down, shove his face into the carpet. Yank down his pants. How the fuck dare he, how the fuck dare he, and I’d seethe just that into his ear as I laid my body over his. I’d pin him down with a forearm to his neck, I’d make him feel every angry pound of me. I’d fuck him right in two.

  Belvedere finds me in the gym the next morning, naked to the waist and covered in sweat.

  Belvedere’s in his mid-twenties, Latinx—and his floppy black hair and tight cardigans and trendy glasses betray the same level of attention he gives to style as he gives to everything else, which is part of why he makes such an excellent aide. The other part is his sheer unflappability; he makes no comment on my haggard expression or sweaty body.

  “Good morning, Mr. President,” he says. I grunt in response, finishing the last four pull-ups of my set before dropping from the bar and reaching for my towel.

  “We’ve got a full docket today,” he continues, unfazed. Ryan Belvedere has seen me in every mood, every state of sweat and undress, every tired, snappish moment in a rented car or in the corner of a high school gymnasium or under the baking sun at a state fair. He’s my body man, my personal aide—my valet if you care for such old-fashioned terms—and he’s awake before me and asleep after me. His job is me. To manage my travel and my appointments in conjunction with my secretary. To make sure my dry-cleaning arrives at the right hotel when I’ve got three different events in three different cities. To hand me Sharpies when I’m signing at rallies, to carry my spare ties, to answer my phone when I can’t. He’s my shadow, and after last night, he’s my most loyal friend.

  Of course, Embry and I were never really friends. When we first met, he thought I was his enemy and I thought he was perfect. Then I fell in love with him, and he’s been breaking my heart ever since.

  I flex my hands just once, hard enough to feel the protest of the bones and thin tendons, to remind myself that I can feel something other than this. Than him.

  My little prince.

  “What’s on today?” I ask, throwing the towel in a nearby basket and taking the folder Belvedere offers. Inside is my agenda for the day and several memos from my staff to review.

  “Briefing from your secretary at eight thirty,” Belvedere says, taking the folder from me and handing me a bottle of water, which I gladly drink. “Then your daily security briefing with Gawayne at nine thirty. A phone call with the new UK prime minister right after, then the televised visit with the Pine Ridge high school. Merlin wants me to remind you to use it as a chance to showcase the early achievements of the reservation infrastructure bill you spearheaded last year.”

  Merlin. Another open wound that needs triaged today. I cap the now-empty bottle and drop it into the recycle bin. “I’m not going to platform on something that should have been done decades ago. It feels corrupt.”

  “I told Merlin you’d say that. And he told me to tell you to do it anyway.”

  “I won’t.”

  “I told him that too. He said to tell you that you and Embry aren’t going to get re-elected on modesty alone.”

  Embry.

  Hearing his name from Belvedere’s mouth is like having my guts exposed. I rub a hand over my face, pray that the salt sting in my eyes is from sweat and not tears.

  “What else?” I ask through my hand.

  “Bakewell wants to meet about the Carpathian sanctions bill the House is floating around. I put her down at one. Then we’ve got a staff meeting in the Oval Office at one-thirty. Handshake session at three, at four we’ve got the police widows coming in. Merlin wants the photo op to smother the latest GOP claim that you’re anti-cop.”

  “For fuck’s sake,” I mutter, dropping my hand. My party had sponsored and successfully pushed through legislation to track officer-involved shootings and to provide federal funds for body cameras and racial sensitivity training. The bill had been crafted in close consultation with the Fraternal Order of Police and several key police chiefs from around the country. It’s the kind of choice I would have easily made as a captain or a major in the war.

  But this isn’t the war, I remind myself with a sigh. This is peacetime. And in peacetime, even the most careful of decisions can get ripped to shreds. Twisted for political gain.

  I remind myself that I chose this way of living. Or it chose me. I’m still not sure which.

  “And then there’s the gala for the Luther Center honors tonight. Trieste, Merlin, and Kay have made a few notes on your speech—would you like me to squeeze in Uri this morning for final revisions?”

  Uri Katz is my head speechwriter, and he’s damn good. Normally, I want his input at every stage of a speech. But today is not a normal day, and today more than ever I’m feeling the bitter irony of speaking at the Luther Center—a foundation dedicated to promoting the arts and sciences that began with an endowment from my dead father, President Penley Luther. A father that only a few people in this world know is mine.

  "Any word from Berlin?" I ask. "It should come through today or tomorrow, and it'll be unofficial channels."

  Belvedere shakes his head. "Not yet, sir."

  "Okay." I hand him the folder back. “We’re changing the day. Tell Lana to compile any information from her briefing and put it on my desk. Have Gawayne send the PDB digitally, reschedule the prime minister. I trust Uri to revise the speech on his own; I’ll tweak it later if I think it needs it. Something big happened last night, and our staff meeting is first thing now, got it?”

  “Got it,” Belvedere murmurs, already typing into his iPhone.

  “High school and widows stay, everything else gets bumped to
tomorrow, please. I’ll go to the gala tonight—see if I can call the prime minister from the car on the way there, now that I think of it.”

  My body man is nodding, tapping on the screen. “Anything else?”

  “I want Merlin in the Residence as soon as possible.” I glance at the window by the weight machine; the pink dawn is glowing into the hot orange of morning. “He’ll be awake.”

  “Done.”

  We walk out of the gym together, making for the stairs to the second floor. “And Belvedere?”

  “Yes, Mr. President?”

  “The moment my wife’s plane from New York touches down, I want to know.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I touch his shoulder, and he looks at me, his young face a combination of honored and vulnerable and wary. It reminds me so much of a young Embry that I have to swallow.

  “Thank you, Ryan,” I say quietly. “For all your help. I would be nothing without you. It was true during the campaign and it’s even more true now.”

  “Sir,” Belvedere stammers. “You know that’s not true at all.”

  “I wish you knew,” I say with a rueful smile, “how weak I really am.” And then I leave him to start my first day in ten years without my prince.

  I feel Merlin approaching.

  It was one thing I was better than most at in Carpathia, that feeling. It’s not simply seeing or hearing, it’s not guessing, it’s not even really deduction. The ability to feel your way through a forest, through a silent village full of blinking eyes and closed mouths. To feel your way through a battle.

  When I came to the capitol, it served me well. I already knew how to be still through the bullshit, through the noise, and I could feel the lies and the plans people spun around me. It’s not actually battle in the true sense of the word, and thank God for that. I’ve taken enough lives, killed enough enemies, watched enough buildings burn. Sometimes when my staff is caught up in the daily cycle of panic and exhilaration that defines life here, I remind them that this is not really war. What we do matters, but more importantly, everybody gets to live. There’s time to fix things, time to think.